


Sweetheart

by penhales



Category: Silicon Valley (TV)
Genre: Fluff, Light Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-16
Updated: 2019-01-16
Packaged: 2019-10-11 01:32:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,874
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17437358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/penhales/pseuds/penhales
Summary: Jared has a freudian slip during a Pied Piper meeting and Richard decides to set things right.(for dadsBBQparty for the SV Winter Exchange)





	Sweetheart

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dadsBBQparty](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dadsBBQparty/gifts).



“Richard, sweetheart,”

Richard had been in a few rooms without oxygen in his life. He remembered a big fight his parents had when he was eleven, and the way he and his siblings had all sat in the living room in silence together, listening. He remembered wishing he could disappear when, in the tenth grade, he told Morgan Bishop that he liked her in front of a full cafeteria. He remembered standing up in the middle of his third exam for CS 576, just a few weeks before graduation, and just walking out, without turning in his test, and the way that everyone in the room collectively held their breath in shock.

Somehow, the lack of oxygen in the Pied Piper conference room was even less than all of the other times he could remember put together. Gilfoyle was the first to break the silence.

“You what?”

Jared’s face flushed in embarrassment.

“Oh my god, Richard, I’m sorry, that was so unprofessional of me.”

Richard really wanted to do the right thing. He liked Jared. He liked Jared a lot. And he didn’t want Jared to have to face the humiliation Gilfoyle and Dinesh seemed rearing to wreak.

“I know this probably isn’t a good time, but I totally called it, Gilfoyle!”

“We all implicitly understood these two were going to fuck sooner or later, Dinesh, it didn’t need saying.”

“Whatever, I’m right, and you’re just mad because I said it first.”

Richard interrupted them at the first opportunity.

“Hey, guys, stop it. Jared just made a mistake, you don’t have to be dicks about it. We’re not “fucking”, it was an accident.”

He expected Jared to look back at him with an overwhelming expression of relief and gratefulness, but his face had gone totally blank instead.

“Yeah, it was just an unprofessional accident. Excuse me.”

Jared ducked out of the conference room as if he had just seen an intern waving at him for help outside, but the surrounding context made it perfectly obvious that he was deeply embarrassed or even hurt.

“Look what you guys did. The whole meeting’s disrupted because you couldn’t keep your stupid comments to yourself.”

“Uh… _our_ comments?”

“Well, yeah. You guys know that Jared is kind of sensitive about making mistakes, you didn’t need to make it worse by making fun of him.”

Dinesh’s hands caught on his hips and he had strapped on the facial expression Richard recognized as a mixture of righteous irritation and shock. Gilfoyle settled for cocking an eyebrow at Richard and he folded his arms.

“Are you sure this is the hill you want to die on?”

“What are you talking about? You two obviously humiliated him and now he’s going to go off and have some kind of emotional or mental crisis in the main office and scare off all of our new programmers.”

Gilfoyle dropped his brow and narrowed his eyes.

“First of all, Dick, Jared isn’t a delicate orchid you need to gently mist and keep away from direct sunlight. He’ll be fine. Second of all, I don’t think it was what Dinesh so gracefully spewed all over him that made him upset.”

“What – me? What about what you said? I wasn’t the one who pulled the F-word out like it was a bowl of potato chips at a house party.”

“You’ve never been invited to a house party, Dinesh.”

“I’ve been to tons of parties. I go to parties every weekend. People beg me to go to their parties.”

Richard waved his hands exasperatedly.

“Will you two shut up and do this later? If Jared wasn’t upset about what you two assholes said to him, what’s the problem?”

Gilfoyle took his glasses off to rub at his eyes.

“No one wants to have this conversation with you, Richard. Try putting two and two together for once.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about and all of this is just pissing me off. I should probably go find Jared and try to do some damage control for you guys. Again.”

That seemed to set Dinesh off and he rolled his eyes before hissing at Richard in an angry whisper.

“He likes you, you fucking moron.”

“I knew that. That’s not a secret.”

“No, Richard, he romantically likes you. He wants to date you.”

Richard was ready to retort defending Jared’s reputation before it hit him like an update had just gone through his software.

“Oh my god.”

He pulled a chair out from the conference table and gracelessly collapsed into it.

“How long have you guys known?”

“No, no, I’m not having this conversation. I already told you no one wants to do this with you, Dick.”

Gilfoyle took the opportunity to make a beeline for the main office and Dinesh followed straight behind him.

“I’m not gonna do it either. Just go find Jared and talk to him. Be a man, Richard.”

Richard knew without listening for it that Gilfoyle had said something back to Dinesh reminding him of his own cowardice and how it isn’t related to masculinity anyway. Even if it had been said right beside him, in the same room, Richard wouldn’t have been able to hear it. The air rushed in his ears like an oppressive white noise. Jared romantically liked him. Jared had been trying to tell him. For months. And all Richard could do was process his outspoken affection as another example of Jared lacking in self-awareness…

He rested his palms on the cool surface of the conference table, hoping the coolness would help to get rid of the clammy perspiration he was sure was on the undersides of his hands. Richard knew his heart was racing, but whether it was from his fear of actually talking to Jared about his feelings or from the fact that all of their friends already knew about how Jared felt before Richard did was unclear. It was embarrassing, to have someone who loved him as much as Jared did and to be too obtuse to notice when those feelings had taken on a romantic color. If Dinesh and Gilfoyle could notice it, why couldn’t he?

Richard forced himself out of the chair he’d been taking refuge in and shakily made his way to the conference room doorway. There was no telling where Jared had run off to. He’d likely just gone out into the office to go about business in peace and shake off his slip up, but Richard couldn’t see him anywhere in the main office. He wasn’t even in the kitchen trying to make tea to calm himself down. Richard rounded the short hallway to their elevator and took it down to their parking garage to assess whether Jared had decided to just go home for the day. Jared hadn’t ever done such a thing before, not even in the wake of some of their worst days in the office, but Richard knew that this was different, and somehow much worse.

The elevator doors opened and to Richard’s relief, he could see that Jared’s car was still parked in its usual COO spot. He was about to press another button on the elevator get back upstairs and search elsewhere when he noticed movement inside of the car. Richard felt his heart sink right into his stomach.

He tried to make his way slowly over as if Jared was an easily startled animal, coming around on the passenger side of the car. When he reached the window, he leaned down and knocked gently on the glass. Jared only startled slightly and rolled down the passenger-side window while hastily wiping at his eyes.

“Richard, I’m so sorry, I know I need to get back to work.”

“No, it’s really okay. That was…rough, back there.”

“I know, I can’t believe I said that to you in front of everyone, how embarrassing.”

Richard opened the door and climbed into the passenger seat. No need for anyone passing through the garage to overhear their conversation.

“I think we need to talk.”

Jared’s eyes grew round and he almost choked on a breath.

“Oh, Richard, I know I messed up, but please don’t fire me. I’ll do any number of things to make up for it.”

“Jared, no, I’m not firing you. This isn’t about work.”

Jared sniffled quietly and tucked his arms against his chest protectively.

“Okay. What do we need to discuss?”

Richard sighed and ran his hands over his face like he could wipe away his anxiety, which was trickling through him like a stream of cold water.

“Well, what you said in the conference room.”

He hoped Jared might interrupt him to say something else, but for once, he kept quiet.

“I guess I just wanted you to know that, um…that you shouldn’t be embarrassed by it.”

“Oh?”

“I mean it’s not the first pet name I’d choose for myself, but I’m not you, so I don’t get to choose.”

“Richard, I think you might be straying from your point. Unless you wanted to protest the use of that particular term of endearment.”

Richard shook his head.

“Look, I’m not good at this. I’ve never been good at this. Going straight to the point doesn’t go very well, spending too long getting to the point doesn’t work, I’m just bad at, y’know, this.”

Jared smiled softly at him and Richard saw what they’d been trying to tell him. It was shining right behind Jared’s eyes like a penny at the bottom of a mall fountain. Richard felt his breath catch at the sight of it.

“I guess I just wanted to come talk to you because I think it’s okay. How you feel. There isn’t anything wrong with it.”

He could kick himself. Richard knew he was a massive coward, but he’d underestimated exactly how huge of a coward he could be.

“I think that what I’m trying to say is that…me, too. Also.”

Jared was silent for what felt like several minutes, just nodding to himself and running his hands along the steering wheel like a nervous compulsion. Richard didn’t think it was a good idea to try to touch him or engage him again until he was ready, but he wanted just to reach over and take Jared’s hand as if to say, ‘It’s okay, this isn’t a joke or a lie, or the doorway to anything bad. I just want to spend time with you’. But, again, he didn’t have the courage.

“Richard, I don’t know what to say.”

Richard smiled sheepishly and tried to joke with him.

“You could start by calling me ‘sweetheart’ again.”

Jared looked over at him and failed to stifle a nervous, but clearly stress relieving, laugh.

“It was a little mushy of me, wasn’t it?”

“I didn’t mind…baby.”

With no warning at all, Jared leaned over the car’s console, awkwardly wrapping his long arms around Richard’s shoulders.

“I love you, Richard.”

Richard knew he liked Jared. He really, really liked Jared. He was scared too, but something had changed with the slip of those three words. 

“You know what, Jared?"

Richard liked Jared more than he was afraid to say so, and that was enough for him.   
  
"I love you too." 


End file.
